


For the days when we smiled, and the hours that ran wild.

by Zigzagwanderer



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Eventual Happy Ending, Jealousy, Post-Fall (Hannibal), Smut, murder?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-26
Packaged: 2019-11-08 05:46:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17975582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zigzagwanderer/pseuds/Zigzagwanderer
Summary: I guess this is about healing and miscommunication, in the months following their Fall.And a big thank you to anyone who reads my fics-you are really very kind to do so. xxxxhugsxxxx





	1. Chapter 1

Sunset myrrhs the sea. The air is oily; the boats are coming in, heavy with death and the flock that follows it. 

He whirlpools his whiskey, bowed towards the railing. 

There is something on the balcony with him. Something that rubs the parts of himself that he thought had no feeling; the tips of his chest and his tailbone and the span of his hips.

Desire has caught up with Will Graham, at last. 

Clarity, and a certain idleness, has brought peace, and indecision. There is nowhere within his choices for him to hide, since he joined hands with Hannibal and jumped.

It is easier, sometimes, not to choose at all. 

“On your bed, then.” 

Will flinches, and drops his book. Swallows the bitter fluid and puts down the glass. Knuckles at his cock, beading the front of his boxer shorts.

“Berthold. Bed.” Hannibal repeats, calmly, from inside the kitchen, and there is an answering rustle of basketwork from their tiny, characterful, bothersome dog. 

Will stares down at the strange thing, his body, and wonders why he is like this, now. 

The snick of the big knife starts up again.

Hannibal resumes his humming. Faint, and deliberately discontinuous, one half of a duet. 

Will aches; it should be the blithe sound of butchery that scares him, of course. 

But it seems that he is far more afraid of some old, sentimental love song.

Because the empty spaces in the libretto are no longer for him to fill. 

 

There is a row of shingled shacks, made pastel by time, between their doorstep beach and the dunes.

Some sell candy and soda. One is boarded blank, scowling as it sags blindly forward. 

Right at the end, there is the runt of the block, from which a young woman offers trinkets and wind-chimes and spiralling suncatchers. 

She tides out a denim-coloured towel, and curls her toes in the foaming, frayed edge of it. Her chin is a vane on a sundial. 

And she sings, while she threads her tatty shells upon a cord.

This is what makes Hannibal tilt his head in her direction, when it all begins.


	2. Chapter 2

That first morning, Hannibal says nothing about her whilst they wander to the salt-pined promontory.

Berthold dabs paws in green-fringed rockpools. 

Hannibal straddles a cleft in the shoreline and plucks crab from the dim float of forests below him, reaching through canopies of disturbed sand to claim their dinner.

Will snorts as he gets nicked, again and again, half-hearted in his hunting.

He brings the bloodied fingers up to his mouth. 

Hannibal is already dark-eyed under the straw of his hat, but he looks away, unsmiling, and drops their rosy catch into a pail.

They strip down and dive out, off the point. 

The water is cold as they push against it, pressing and densely clear, their limbs like scars against the black reflections of the current. Will circles and touches almost constantly, fingertip to ankle, chilled shoulders brushing Hannibal’s when they surface on the swell, as they kick their heels into the deep belly below them. 

Will is not yet untethered from recent memory; he cannot yet take something as simple as survival for granted, but so long as they can be hand to elbow, he swims, and together they make the sea undo what it did to them, so that they are becoming stronger, every day, at its expense. 

They dry off as they follow the coastal path home, with Will carping on about this and that. 

Berthold dawdles. Will gives in eventually, and tucks him under one arm, by which time Hannibal is turning over a bony ornament of driftwood in his hands. 

His silhouette lays across the dusty legs of the vendor. Her hair, and Hannibal’s eyes, are both fletched with dry gold. She kneels up, eventually, on her raggedy patch of blue, and her voice reveals itself as such a lilting, eager thing. 

Will has an unexpected passion for their apartment’s uncluttered interiors, and none whatsoever for opera, so he ignores the display of bric-a-brac, and the discussion about music, and meanders on to wait outside their apartment building, and throw a ball for their boy. 

The seafront grass is scoured and sharp, more like broken bottles than anything alive, and rooted, and Will grows prickled, and sends Berthold back to retrieve Hannibal.

Or at least the keys which he carries in the pocket of his shirt. 

They climb the concrete stairs.

The girl sidles around the corner of the kiosk, watching them, and trills out some showy, complicated little aria. The acoustics aren’t good, and the gulls rip most of the melody apart.

The pail slops, nonetheless. Will hops and curses and swats at Hannibal’s sweat-sticky forearm. 

“Her name is Clarice,” Hannibal comments, steady again, and holding the door open.

Berthold skitters inside. The hall is an icebox, after the constant, marigold yellow of noon. “She is an exchange student. At the conservatoire. Promising, I should say.”

Will shakes saltwater off his sandals and shrugs. 

“Oh?” he says, and stamps on over to the elevator.


	3. Chapter 3

The city isn’t far; they take the tram to the cinema, benching side-by-side. Hannibal braces to avoid jarring Will on the turns. Despite the teasing that always follows, Will grins the whole way, like a kid on a ride.

Afterwards, they get the spiced sandwiches that Will likes from the stall underneath the sweet chestnut trees.

They also get figs and beer, and walk and eat until they realize they have talked themselves right down a hundred mazing side-alleys to the beach. 

“I’m so tired.” Will manages a soft, tense laugh. He shifts weight onto his right foot as they stare out at the water, which is midnight-coloured, peaks licked brassy by the moon. “But I like...this...too much to go inside.” 

He palms the painful part of his backbone. “Tell me another Mischa story?”

Hannibal tuts and apologises instead, politely turning Will inland. Their street-lamped ziggurat beckons. 

“I prescribe rest, not yet more reminiscences, which you have already heard often enough.”

“Funny; forget you are, were, my doctor.”

Hannibal doesn’t ask what he is now. Although there is a silence which would certainly allow for it.

“I regret not hailing a taxi. Your physical therapy has been neglected, of late.”

Will yawns. “Can’t say I’d be sorry to start up the leg rubs again. Seems like forever.”

He leans as if to fold himself in on Hannibal; Hannibal is, carefully, no longer there. 

There is almost no traffic. They cross the sandy road slowly. Separately.

“I will find you a suitable specialist in the morning.” Hannibal eventually says. The breeze is bolder, and it has both hands in his hair.

“Since when can’t you do it?” Will frowns, and shivers.

“Please, Will. If there is to be no...intimacy between us,” Hannibal is shadowed by the overhang, and he demurs quietly, out of the dark, “I would ask that you do not insist that I touch you in some insultingly...marginal capacity.”

The sea breathes between them; bitterness, decomposition, electricity. 

Will stares. 

He takes himself off to his room. 

The apartment door opens and then closes, and Will hobbles over, still undressing, to look out of the window.

The world is changed; waves war against the land. The long tongue of the promenade is no longer gilded, as the clouds come to spill their secrets ashore. 

Then, there is a plain little dot, which is Berthold, jigging ahead of Hannibal as he walks into the wind. Will fears they will chance the white-foamed inferno beyond the sea-break, and he brings his fists up, helplessly, to breach something, to take something back. 

But Hannibal steers instead towards the row of snugged and shuttered beach-huts.

There is only one with brightness beaconing through the planking.

Will thinks he can hear singing too, a sirening beneath the storm.


	4. Chapter 4

The saint’s day comes, crawling on its knees through the bloody heat. The past month has left blisters upon the year; the sand is ash and the people scratch together, nervously, like tinder. 

“I told you before. They all want a goddamn reference…”

“Documents can be obtained. I await your instruction.”

“…just to clean out kennels or wash strays, for God’s sake.” 

Hannibal takes Berthold and the crumpled applications out of Will’s lap. Replaces them with a paper twist of roasted chestnuts. 

Local rites honour asceticism with wine, rickety carnival rides, and hogs cooked whole, over fires that snap with salt. 

Their blanket is spread by the wall. Roses cling, charred, and the bricks burn back at them. They are always in the wrong place, now.

“When you know what it is you need, be kind enough to ask.” Hannibal does not sigh. “Please eat. The painkillers…”

“Are only necessary because you won’t help me.”

Then Will looks from the stitch-marks on his thigh to the Portuguese dictionary in his hand. He touches his ragged skin; Hannibal was almost too sick to thread the needle. He touches a word; it is _Adoration._

But one of them is almost _absent_ , and the other _abstinent_ , unable to turn the pages towards their next definition.

“Will,” Hannibal says, softly.

Reverse rainbows of bare bulbs flicker on as the sun finally starts to fail. A strange, worshipful cheer echoes up the main street. There is, abruptly, dancing. 

Then there are firecrackers, too, close by, sparking the dry grass.

Berthold bolts.

Will goes after him, telling Hannibal to sit, to stay. 

He jogs. The promenade is a heaving mess of townsfolk. 

The terrier is found, outside their apartment, worrying the wing of a dead seabird.

“C’mere, idiot, beast. Let me hold you. I can’t lose you.” The words fall towards the gutter and Will watches them, bloody, feathered, freed. How simple and how hard it would be, to pick them up and give them, finally, to the only man he has ever loved. 

He wipes his face and carries Berthold home.

Everything in their long, cool rooms is as washed bone; there is no Baltimore in it, no Wolf Trap, nothing but them as they are now, which, from the impersonal artworks and separate quarters, is nothing itself. 

Berthold drinks and settles to sleep. 

Hannibal’s room faces the yard. Will ghosts down the hallway. He is more breathless than he was going up the stairs. 

The wardrobe is hung tidily, the chest of drawers is orderly. 

Only the box under the bed is locked. Will has to force it open. 

Inside, there is only one picture of him. Grainy, and from god knows where. There are many more windchimes and suncatchers and trinkets. 

And the girl’s notes to Hannibal are serious. About her training. About what she wants. She has ambition, she is eager to succeed. Will knows well the background from which she strives to escape, and how Hannibal appreciates those who are not gilt-edged, but gifted.

Will reads the love-letters through one more time. He never wants to do so again. 

Clarice has signed each one; _from your little Starling._

 

Outside, the music throbs and slides, heavier than before. Meat-smoke and sweet-sweat drip and haze. 

Hannibal has remained where he was told to. The girl is with him. She is undernourished, unblemished, and Hannibal is yet to dress her, Will sees; her clothes are cheap. 

“… and maybe Paris?” She is saying to him, in painful earnest. Her eyes are so clear. 

Will is burnt brick and roses. Rage flickers, flame to flesh. He waits until Hannibal sees him, then he turns and limps away.


	5. Chapter 5

The carnival is consuming itself, lapping up at the balcony, while the fishermen on the jetty rub their bellied nets.

Will goes inside. He burns things, lost in his unchaste contemplations, but Hannibal offers them up anyway, on their too-small table. Heat scissors between them, underneath the cloth, and the whisky glass grates as their crockery chisels together.

“After all the subtleties. The stratagems.” The cherries are too sweet. Will hates the roundness, the coy shine of them. “Envy is the strop you finally edge me on.”

Silver slowly ceases drawing, bright, through the lamb. 

Hannibal has not yet tasted what is before him. 

“You wanted whetting,” he tells Will.

They are hungry. They let it hurt.

Will nods. Stands. He is flushed, and obvious. “So, take me to bed?”

The sky is dark red, seeping along the corridor, pooling into Will’s room. 

They kiss, out of curiosity. It becomes a fathomless thing. Unending. They have to stop, and step back, or never stop. Hannibal goes to the window; he begins to undress. Will watches, then does the same, sitting on the chair. He reaches and arches with his palms, following the line of Hannibal’s flanks.

“I mean, I like you caring. The affection, I suppose. When you withdrew, I…missed you. I wouldn’t want this without that.”

“Greedy,” Hannibal remarks, kneeling, and using his teeth. There is blood straight away on Hannibal’s mouth and Will’s leg. Will makes a sound of pleasure, and Hannibal tilts his head and sucks, hesitantly, at the side of Will’s cock. Will tenses, and screws at Hannibal’s hair until it is tight in his fists.

“I am _deserving_ ,” Will corrects. “You like her, don’t you?” 

“The sacrifice would be less meaningful, without my…attachment.”

For some moments neither does anything, apart from lick, and be licked. 

“She’s…you’re going to…for me?” Will’s final fears shelve away, into something beautifully cold, and abyssal. 

Hannibal fucks Will with the loose, spit-wet cuff of his fingers, so that he can answer. 

“I have little else left to give.”

He slides Will into himself. Will opens wide; eyes and limbs and lips parted, the press of Hannibal’s thumbs pinning him to the present; the press of Hannibal’s throat pushing him further towards the embracing, the terrifying, the perfect deep.

They have waited so long. But now they are here. Complete.

And Will empties quickly, and entirely, yet almost immediately needs his fill of Hannibal again.

He tugs them both over to the green shallows of his sheets. 

"Tell me how; which part do I get first?"

“The voice.” Hannibal smiles back, sadly, but devotedly. “The tongue. Of course.”

They begin to fall through the night. There will be many such drownings to come.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> (continues on from previous chapter.) Thank you for reading!!!xxxxxx

The bay bruises along the horizon, the punched-down dunes blue-black against the yellow-blue. 

The robes of the saints have been torn for bed sheets, and there is scarlet trickling across the cheek of the star-freckled sea.

It might be dawn, soon, in the dead-drunk town. 

Will and Berthold are alone with the bones and beer-cans which litter the now-silent promenade. 

The wind makes the gritty pits of charcoal wink red, and Berthold helps it hunt for scraps of pig amongst the trash. He pisses and leaps and runs for a while, then finds Will, who peels off his second-skin gloves and forces the dying fire to swallow them whole. 

When all the evidence is gone, he splashes himself and Berthold clean, symbolically, if not forensically, in the sea. 

Then he climbs all the way back up into Hannibal’s arms. 

“You stink of sulphur,” Hannibal comments, sitting on Will’s soiled bed, hair awry. “What have you done?”

The flames gather strength, outside. The wood of the beach-huts was so tired, so old, so grey, that Will wonders if they do not _welcome_ the gnaw and gobble of the gift he gave them; if their murder was not, in fact, a mercy. They will be grimly immortal, now, inserted into local lore. 

He pushes Hannibal back, pushes Hannibal’s arms right up over his head, slides down to bite at Hannibal’s belly. His hips. To taste, and to taste himself there. 

“I don’t appreciate even the suggestion of your disloyalty,” Will murmurs, between licks, “however necessary a spur it might have been.” 

“Ah.”

“There will be no further honouring for your little songbird, you will make of her no beautiful ritual, to keep her in the golden cage of your memory. I have cheated you of her significance. She is to be consumed by our forgetfulness, feathers, bones and all.” 

“I see.”

Will sucks between Hannibal’s legs. 

Distantly, there is an alarm. 

Will raises his head. “You belong to me. You will take whatever I choose to give you and never look elsewhere for anything, for any reason, again.” 

“As you wish.” Hannibal glitters with anger and admiration. He has a high colour, his muscles are wet and they tremble. “And what exactly will you give me, now, by your own choice?”

He expects obfuscation. The flexing of a fledgling power. But Will smiles down at him with the simple completeness of love, and presses himself home. 

“Everything, Hannibal,” Will says, helplessly. “I promise to give you _everything_.”


End file.
